The information scientist Nora Schmidt talks about the prevalence of colonial structures in European libraries and exploring ways to disrupt those structures. Drawing on her PhD «The Privilege to Select. Global Research System, European Academic Library Collections, and Decolonisation» (2020) she traces processes that sustain coloniality and explore methods to actively reject those processes and the privilege attached to them such as forming networks to create awareness for the need to de-colonise the library or campaigning for the time to do this work. The conversation took place in the framework of the artistic research and education project «Teaching the Radical Catalogue: A Syllabus 2021–22», which investigates the process of information retrieval as a political project (syllabus.radicalcatalogue.net).
Nora Schmidt completed her PhD in 2020 with the title The Privilege to Select. Global Research System, European Academic Library Collections, and Decolonization. Here, the information scientist and sociologist conducted research on the limiting function of libraries, which has been little discussed until now, and whose holdings and access via search are quite exclusionary and restrictive.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7105-9515
